Score effects have an impact in all sports. How aggressive a team plays is often directly influenced by the score and how much time is left. In hockey, this often turns into leading teams going in a defensive shell and doing their best to keep the opposition on the perimeter, getting a clear, and then dumping and changing. For the trailing team, it’s time to throw everything on net and increase the aggression. This is why we adjust for score effects.

But does every team do this equally? How do the types of shots they create change based on whether they are leading, trailing, or tied? I’m going to use the 5v5 passing data collected by myself, project volunteers, and Corey Sznajder over the last three seasons to look at how the Sabres changed their attacking approach when trailing in games, something they did a lot of in 2017-2018. All other 5v5 data is from Natural Stat Trick.

I wanted to establish a baseline for each team and decided the tied state would...